Climbing Iztaccihuatl: Third time is the Charm
Stats: 4260 feet of gain, summit elevation of 17,159, 7.8 miles RT. Total time: 14 hours and 40 minutes.
Climbed: December 14, 2023. GPX track
After our acclimatization was more or less complete, we drove to Paso de Cortes to register for our climb of Iztaccihuatl, the eighth-highest peak in North America.
This was my third attempt on Iztaccihuatl’s standard route, but the first time I’ve attempted Iztaccihuatl as a day climb from the trailhead. The first time, back in 2002, we slept in the Grupos de los Cien hut at 15,500 feet while I worried about mice crawling into my sleeping bag. In 2016 we camped next to the hut and a mouse got into our tent and we had to pull everything out of our tent in the middle of the night to get it out.
This time, I did not interact with any mice and more importantly, was saved the trouble of hauling water to camp. I definitely recommend doing Iztaccihuatl as a day climb instead of camping with mice at 15,500 feet.
Mythical Context and a Route Named for Body Parts
Iztaccihuatl means “the white woman” in Nahuatl. She is generally considered to be a woman laying down, and the standard route, “La Arista del Sol” or “Ridge of the Sun” climbs from her feet to her breasts. There are a number of Romeo and Juliet-type stories about Iztaccihuatl and Popocateptl, the oft-erupting volcano on the other side of Paso de Cortés.
Park Entrance
We stopped at the park entrance and paid the entry fee of 58 pesos each. We had to fill out a form, but the guy at the desk essentially told us what to fill in for the standard route. He then gave us a receipt that we had to show to another guy to open the yellow gate to let us drive up a terrible one-way road to the trailhead. Renting an SUV seemed really helpful for dealing with this road, but we saw all manner of vehicles.
Hiking up the Feet to the Knees in the Dark
We camped a little bit down the road from the trailhead (La Joya) and had the place to ourselves. Since I was the only one not taking a dieretic (diamox), I was the only one of the three of us who actually slept for a few hours. We awoke at 11pm, packed up camp and put everything in the rental car, and started up around 12:20am, around the same time as many others who had camped at the trailhead (which I don’t recommend. It seemed loud and busy).
The first part of the Iztaccihautl climb is a straightforward hike, although it can be more difficult in the dark with all the trail braiding. Fortunately I remembered it pretty well from my 2016 trip and we had a good GPX track.
We switched to mountaineering boots at about 14,600 feet because the snow was more consistent. There was more snow than I’ve ever seen on the mountain before, even in 2002, because of the recent storms. Above the Grupos de los Cien hut at 15,500 feet the hike turns into more of a scramble. We put on crampons above the first “knee” at about 16,500 feet.
Summit Ridge
We then stayed along the ridge for the rest of the climb, slogging up and down for about 1.2 miles between 16,300 and 16,800 feet. Crampons and an ice axe seemed necessary given the icy conditions we had, but may not be necessary with less snow. My original plan was microspikes before we realized how much snow there was. We finally reached the “pecho” between 8am and 8:30am. When I got there, someone else’s guide told me it was the summit.
I looked over at another summit to the north, which looked higher. The guide told me it was the “Cabeza” (head) which is lower. Both the GPX track that we had and the Gaia maps showed the southern part of the “pecho” as the summit, so I didn’t keep going. We were also already 20 minutes past our turnaround time of 8am. However, after I got off the mountain I realized that both Peakbagger and Summitpost say the northernmost part of the pecho is the summit, and my Gaia track says I only reached a max elevation of 17,094 feet, not the summit elevation of 17,159 feet. So I’m not sure if I can really say I “summited” this mountain. But I’m not going to try it again for the 4th time!
If you go up there and want to hit both summits for good measure, it looked like a pretty easy ridgeline hike between the two.
Slogging Back
Coming back was tough. The ups and downs on the way up meant we also had to go up and down on the way back. Climbing the hill up from the remnant glacier seemed particularly demoralizing to our team.
Below the knees, it’s important to stay to skier’s left to get back to the hut. We started going too far left, which was the same mistake I made in 2016, but a group who had done the same thing was coming back up so they could descend again. At this point the snow had melted and there was a lot of scree. We slipped a few times, but it wasn’t terrible.
We switched back to trail runners and light hikers at the Grupos de los Cien hut. In many places the melting snow had turned the trail into muddy goo, and in others it was wet scree. Neither was particularly fun and we all slipped quite a bit going down.
The extended time at altitude is probably the biggest difficulty with climbing Iztaccihuatl. But that meant it was good acclimatization for our next climb, Pico de Orizaba.
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